[00:00:00] People always ask me, why can't I just use my own LLC as my trustee? Or why can't I just be my own trustee?
[00:00:11] Hey, I'm Joe Siegel, your real estate asset protection attorney here in Orlando, Florida, and I'm here to answer that question for you today because it's one that we get all the time for people who are looking to save money on their land trust or they're using attorneys who are not familiar with land trust to set up their land trusts, which means they're usually overpaying for it, or they're attorneys who were not even licensed to practice law in the state of Florida who don't know what they're doing, or they're using outside companies that are not even lawyers to set up their land trusts from outside the state of Florida. And they don't understand how it works in the state of Florida like we do. We're the longest lasting, oldest, largest land trust company in the state of Florida.
[00:00:51] We helped write the statutes on it. We wrote the book on it. Land trust in Florida, go to landtrustbook. Com, you can find it there.
[00:00:58] But people always ask, it's like, well, why can't I save money? I can just be my own trustee and I can set up a Wyoming llc so my name still will not appear, but I'm in control every day of everything that gets signed. And I'm totally in control of the property. And I go, that's perfectly fine. You're absolutely allowed to do that. You are allowed to be your own trustee of your property.
[00:01:19] Number one, if you use a Wyoming LLC or Delaware LLC or one of those anonymous jurisdiction llc, you are going to find that you are really setting yourself up for being a little too anonymous when it comes to your real estate. Because at that point, no one looking at the property can find who really is the human being to talk to about this property.
[00:01:41] So when somebody shows up to, to rent it, a potential tenant, they show up to rent it. And they got John standing there saying, yeah, it's my property. Go ahead and give me first month's rent, last month's rent and a thousand dollars security deposit in cash, please, or cash or money order only a wire. Yeah, I don't want my name associated. They just, they're just going to take your money and disappear. And now you're going to move in as the tenant. And you, you're never really sure was John really the owner of the property because it shows up some Wyoming llc as trustee of some land trust. Is the, the, the owner of this Property on the record. So you had no idea who to call. You've given all your money to this person. They leave.
[00:02:19] Two or three weeks later, here comes the sheriff knocking on your door, going, why are you trespassing? You're trespassing. You got to get out. Get out. And you go, well, I've already paid first and last month's rent and a thousand dollar security deposit. We've moved our entire family in, moving in from out of state. What are we supposed to do, Sheriff? And the real owner of the property shows up and they say, we don't care. That's not our problem. Whoever you gave the money to, they'd broken into the house. They had no right to be there. Or worst case scenario, that person shows up at a title company and says. Or they don't even show up. They just send an email to a title company and say, here, I'm refinancing this property and I'm getting a loan for $50,000 against it. Not that much money. The house is worth 500,000. They're going to take out a $50,000 loan. Title Company gets some affidavits signed at closing. It's the best information that they've got. They get copies of some documents that have been completely made up by the fraudster. And now the bank gives a $50,000 loan secured by the property that is owned in this land trust that is held in a trust in an LLC by a Wyoming LLC that no one can verify who truly, truly owns it. And now you have a $50,000 mortgage against your property. And you go, well, that's not right. I didn't put the mortgage. And then the lender goes, that's fine. We're just going to foreclose on this $500,000 property for this $50,000 or 100,000 or $250,000 that we're owed because we had nothing else to go on. Title companies coming after everybody because they're on the hook for it. So that's why being too anonymous sometimes is not good. So then you go, okay, fine, I won't be anonymous. I'll form a Florida llc. Or I'll just be my own trustee. I'll do it. Okay, then why in the world are you even bothering doing a land trust? Because if you are acting as your own trustee and you are your own beneficiary of your trust, you've blown it. You have no anonymity. You are doing everything. So you're the one who's going to get sued individually and as trustee of the trust, they're going to look up your name and if you're trustee of multiple properties for yourself, they're going to realize, oh, this person has deep pockets. So that car wreck that you were just in, let's go ahead and sue him because yeah, his insurance sucks, but he's evidently got money somewhere because he owns all these properties. If nothing else, we can start taking the properties and putting the judgment against them and foreclosing our judgment against all of his properties that he owns.
[00:04:36] So why bother? If you're going to be your own trustee individually of your own trust, why bother? So then the next fallback is, okay, well then I'll get my mom, I'll get my buddy, I'll get my friend, I'll have my long, long term assistant be my trustee of my trust and they'll take care of it. Well, I can tell you some horror stories there. Number one, mom is your trustee and then three days later, mama gets served by the process server with a three foot thick lawsuit in federal court for tenant discrimination. Or your friend, who's been your friend forever goes, you know what, I'm pretty hard up on money. I'm just going to go and I own this property so I'm going to deed it out to myself. I'm going to get a mortgage on it and I'll put the mortgage on it. Then I'll just put it back into trust and we won't tell anybody and I'll just make the payments on it and someday I'll be able to pay it off, but I'll make the payments on it and it'll be okay. And then stop making the payments and the property's being foreclosed. Now you've lost your property because you're just using a friend or a family member as your trustee to keep your name off of it. Or worse yet, you never named a successor trustee and that person dies or they just get sideways with you and they just refuse to sign anything. Now you're in a battle with them to change trustees and everything else. If you just use a reputable third party trustee company like my land trustee as your trustee. We've been in business for decades.
[00:06:00] We are lawyers, so we're not going to put anything at risk for our own law licenses and everything else we've got behind it. We are trustees of thousands of properties in the state of Florida and we helped write the law, we wrote the book on it. Landtrustbook.com We've been around for a very long time. We are not going to risk our reputation, our own money, our own everything else we have for taking out a mortgage on a property, for, for putting a tenant in a property and stealing the rents. We're not going to bother with that. That's not worth it to us.
[00:06:33] So if you use a third party trustee, a lot of people go, well, I just want to save that extra money, that annual fee. Well, fine, but pennywise pound foolish, that that saying is a saying for a reason. It's survived for generations of, of humanity because it's true. Pennywise pound foolish. So our advice is always use a reputable third party trustee company. If you need one, go to mylandtrustee.com we're here to help. If you have any questions, check out our website, check out the book or give us an
[email protected] or give us a ring. We're here to help. Thanks for listening to this edition of Trust this. If you got something out of it, please press like and subscribe and give us a five star review to help us reach others who can benefit from this series. Until next time, keep aspiring to a better life.
